John McCain Makes Heinously False Charge That Rand Paul 'is now working for Vladimir Putin'

Apparently, opposing Montenegro's inclusion in NATO is the new treason.

What do you call a U.S. senator who opposes the expansion of NATO to include the troubled former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, a country that survived a (reportedly Russia-backed) coup attempt as recently as last fall? If you're Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and that colleague is intervention-skeptic Rand Paul, you call him, remarkably, a pawn of Vladimir Putin.

"You are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin… of trying to dismember this small country," McCain lectured Paul on the Senate floor today. (Was it really just five weeks ago that Mitch McConnell silenced Elizabeth Warren over impugning the conduct and motives of a Senate colleague?) McCain then asked for unanimous consent for the Senate to approve Montenegro's accession into the U.S.-led military alliance, and Paul objected, before quickly exiting. That's when McCain got all voice-quivery and hand-choppy:

I note the senator from Kentucky leaving the floor without justification or any rationale for the action he has just taken. That is really remarkable, that a senator blocking a treaty that is supported by the overwhelming number, perhaps 98—at least—of his colleagues would come to the floor and object and walk away. And walk away! The only conclusion you can draw, when he walks away, is he has no argument to be made, he has no justification for his objection to having a small nation be part of NATO that is under assault from the Russians. So I repeat again: The senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.

Currently, the United States has troops in dozens of countries and is actively fighting in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen (with the occasional drone strike in Pakistan). In addition, the United States is pledged to defend 28 countries in NATO. It is unwise to expand the monetary and military obligations of the United States given the burden of our $20 trillion debt.

McCain has been getting a lot of good press these days for the usual reason—occasionally opposing a Republican president that the press also doesn't like. Included in his latest round of re-mavericking are hosannahs for his brave stance against Trumpian conspiracy mongering. Will his friends in the press now point out that the Arizona senator has made a horrendous dual-loyalty charge against a sitting colleague with zero evidence aside from a procedural vote?

McCain has been slamming Paul over his supposed "isolationism" since 2010, famously calling him a "wacko bird" in March 2013, telling reporters a few months later that a Rand vs. Hillary presidential race would be a "tough choice," and unhappily sharing a Foreign Relations Committee seat with the Tea Party senator these past four-plus years. Paul has frequently returned the favor by using the phrase "stale and moss-covered." All of which is understandable, given their very different positions on an important issue central to both of them.

But just because Vladimir Putin dislikes an American policy doesn't make it automatically virtuous or wise. Part of the original conception of NATO expansion—which I, unlike 99 percent of libertarians, both favored and covered while it was happening—was that the new members had to be stable, with border disputes with neighbors fully resolved at the treaty level, substantial minority-population protections, and no pressing disputes with adversaries. Does that sound like Montenegro to you? Or Georgia, which McCain has been pushing for NATO inclusion since at least 2008 (and which Paul single-handedly blocked in 2011)?

Despite writing a book critical of his views, I have happily defended John McCain against scurrilous charges about his patriotism and heroism. To see him go rhetorically McCarthyite against a fellow American for having the temerity to disagree with his often questionable foreign policy judgment is one of the most disgraceful moments of his long career.

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I have always been baffled about McCain for this reason. He of all people should know that sending troops in to combat is the worst of many bad choices when it comes to resolving conflicts such as these. And yet that seems to be his first response to resolving these issues.

He was a pilot, not a strategist. He understands how to fly a plane, not fight a war. He was passed over for sea command for a reason.

This is the same guy who got completely suckered by that fake Syria analyst Elizabeth O’Bagy, and then hired her for his staff after she was exposed as a fraud and fired from her think tank. The man’s an idiot when it comes to foreign policy…he’s backed every bad war we’ve entered and he’d have doubled that number if he had his choice.

He was also an attack pilot, a bomber so to speak, not a fighter pilot. I always figured that rankled him and it was his envy more than anything that led him into politics. I mean, the press don’t know squat, and half the time they call him a fighter pilot, and I can easily imagine some ribbing even before capture about his father and grandfather were admirals, and attack pilots never get to be admirals. Then the press ignorantly rubs salt in the wounds for 7 years of captivity, and long afterwards.

I have always been baffled about McCain for this reason. He of all people should know that sending troops in to combat is the worst of many bad choices when it comes to resolving conflicts such as these

Cognitive dissonance: the only way he can deal with his loss of health, with his pain, and with his wasted years is by deluding himself into believing that it was all worth it and that others should follow in his footsteps.

Of course, McCain’s other problem is that he isn’t very smart, and that is compounded by his increasing senility.

Serious question about John McCain: when he poops himself on the Senate floor, do his aides fight over who has to change his diaper this time, or does Lindsay Graham call every hour just in case there’s a special job for him to do?

McCain’s always been pretty thin-skinned and hot-tempered, hasn’t he? Just google “John McCain hot temper” and you’ll find lots of news stories about how disconcerting his temperament is. True, virtually all of the news stories are from 2008 for some strange reason – I guess maybe the stress of the Presidential campaign made him nastier than usual? But he’s always been a media darling for his bipartisan and fair-minded attacks on fellow Republicans so I guess they’ve forgiven him for that brief period when he was literally Hitler.

Notice how vigorously reason.com attacks the falsehoods of John McCain (as it should).

Then notice how much they dilute their criticism of Drumpf’s lies. Usually by trying to parse words very narrowly, or including something Hillary did or might have done, or, as was the case in the “no evidence of wiretapping” today, nothing.

To see him go rhetorically McCarthyite against a fellow American for having the temerity to disagree with his often questionable foreign policy judgment is one of the most disgraceful moments of his long career.

There are some former Lincoln Savings & Loan bondholders who would disagree. And probably an ex-wife who waited for six years while he was a POW. And quite a few survivors of American POWs who may or may not have been left behind.

McCain has been a disgrace for a very long time. So much so, that I even doubt the hagiography of his POW days.

Which was entirely written by McCain himself. But I’m sure that the NoViMan prison guard think highly of him because “their songbird” serenading them with tales of the greatness of the US constitution.

You wanna know why libertarians are slow to formally join this “resistance” despite the fact that there’s a lot to hate about Trump? Because the left is aligning with John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Bill Kristol, Evan McMullin, and the intelligence agencies that spied on us and deceived us into war

I mean jeez, that’s the perfect enemy list right there. What exactly are we gonna replace Trump with if these are your allies?

Yep. As the Democrats are busy rocketing so far leftward they are no longer a national party – it is these asshole establishment Republicans who are left defending the big government, massive entitlement programs, the whole works.

I’ve said it many times – if the DNC can’t fix itself soon it’s over. Then the GOP splits and people like McCain and Ryan can stop pretending to be conservative during campaigns. They can just dust off the 1988 DNC platform and run on that.

Yep – I would call the Ryan types center-left. Basically moderate / blue-dog democrats from the 80’s and early 90’s.

Paul, Amash, the rest of the Freedom Caucus – they go off and form a Goldwater Conservative party.

Trump is somewhere between these two factions. He recognizes the enemy in the deep state and big government and would ally himself with the Goldwaters against them. But in regards to many policies such as preserving entitlements with only mild reforms – he’s with the blue-dogs.

If you need any further confirmation of your theory, and for the record it is absolutely one I agree with, note that we just elected a Democrat President of the United States and people are losing their fucking minds even though Trump literally supports a laundry list of shit that they actually agree with. Was it not enough that an actual honest-to-god Socialist was the runner up for the Democratic nomination and that all of the most popular Democrats are either Socialists or Progressives? The writing is on the wall people. I called this result 17 years ago, but even I didn’t really think it would happen so soon.

Yeah this is a nice reminder that McCain could well have been worse than Trump, at least on foreign policy. With Trump: flip a coin, heads you eat shit tails you don’t. With McCain: no coin, you just eat shit.

I have loathed Donald Trump since he came on the national scene in the 1980s. He was basically a male real estate developer version of the Kardashians back then. Mostly famous for being rich and famous. Sure, he worked some real estate deals in New York, so he wasn’t as completely useless as a Kardashian, but it was his ostentatious lifestyle that made the news. When he announced his candidacy, I thought he’d be an American Berlusconi.

Trump has met my expectations. Still, considering the list of those who consider him an enemy, and considering his cabinet and SCOTUS appointments versus those of that Hillary! would make, I can’t help but wish him the best. The Schadenfreude is an additional benefit.

I’m curious to see how things play out over the next four years. I don’t know anyone who hated Obama from the beginning but then eventually became convinced that he was a great leader. If anything he only made people less trusting and more skeptical as his final term ran out. He did get re-elected and that counts for something, although I would argue his opponent was terrible and the full catastrophe of Obamacare hadn’t fully reared its head yet.

Trump clearly has a large contingent against him, and if my FB feed is any indication there are tons of Americans who hate him with the fire of a thousand suns. But many of the things Trump has/is proposing will do more to enhance Americans well being than anyone since Reagan if they actually happen. Then there are the lies from the media about Trump being racist and misogynist and homophobic and whatever, which don’t stand up to scrutiny. Eventually people find out the truth and this is part of the reason the media is rated so untrustworthy right now.

I bet Trump will still find a way to screw it up, but I do wonder if the results from his administration will turn the haters that you see now.

It was a great upset, but Hillary was a terrible candidate and Trump played the populist/nationalist card better than anyone I’ve ever seen. I don’t think any other GOP candidate had a shot against Hillary because they didn’t want to go that route, whereas Trump said what they wanted to hear, regardless of whether or not he believed it.

What I’m most afraid of is that he will let his ego get in the way of him doing the right things. Like he will just go too far with some kind of vendetta against someone who pisses him off where he opens himself up to serious charges by the left, or he abuses his power in criminal ways. Maybe the job will get him to keep that in check, but who knows.

I disagree. Hillary was so terrible that any of the GOP candidates would have beaten her. I say that because almost 8 million people voted third party last year, and Evan McMullin ran as an independent, directly because of who the major party nominees were. Of those 8 million, 4.5 million voted for Gary Johnson, and 731,000 for McMullin. Hillary won CO, MN, and NH by fewer votes than what Johnson got. If some other GOP candidate were their nominee, McMullin doesn’t run at all and Hillary loses those states.

So what? You want people like me to agree with Trump when he’s right even if I personally loathe the guy. So what is wrong with people like you agreeing with McCain or Kristol or McMullin when they are right, even if you personally loathe them?

It’s not just that they are despicable. Shit, advocating for free speech means you defend despicable human beings all the time. It’s because their points of disagreement are the most dangerous ones and I see them as worse than Trump. They are warmongers and are pissed off that Trump doesn’t want to get into a pissing contest with Russia. I don’t want to elevate these people into a position of power because they are already openly advocating for the same warmonger bullshit they pulled a decade ago. The left is entertaining them, and also had a candidate who advocated for a no-fly zone

For the record, I despise Trump. I think his position on trade could easily nullify anything I like regarding his cuts to regulation. His budget will be a catastrophe. We saw how healthcare went. Sessions is already showing how awful he will be. I had issues with the travel ban, and he’s already drone happy and going to town on Yemen. But the left and the neocons are latching onto Russia and how they are the enemy who conspired to elect Trump, not any of the issues of concern to a libertarian, save for perhaps immigration (and that’s a divisive issue among libertarians to say the least). So what, we kick out Trump, return the neocons to power, humor their wars, and go with more leftist policies back home? It is the worst of all worlds

A decade ago we could ally with the left about Iraq and civil liberty abuses from the war on terror. Not anymore

What exactly are we gonna replace Trump with if these are your allies?

How about… a libertarian?

Of course even if the left really is “aligning” with the likes of Bill Kristol and McMullin, it’s not like they would ever vote for people like that for president. They’ll vote for Elizabeth Warren or Chelsea Clinton.

Same kind of deal with us, I reckon. When Kristol and McMullin are right, then we should not be afraid to say so. Doing so doesn’t mean that we endorse everything that they do.

You live in this system of governance called a ‘democracy’ chemjeff (yes, yes, it’s a republic and all that, shut up and listen for a second). Libertarians don’t even poll at 5% of the popular vote, if they self identify, and there’s only a few politicians with libertarian leaning impulses as a whole. You are not going to get a libertarian into the most major political office in the country unless you’re willing to engage in a violent overthrow of the government. The people who do have the support to put someone in that position of power, however, are currently the left-wing, the Trump populists, and the neo-cons.

So it’s a matter of thinking strategically rather than emotionally/naively.

I have great admiration and respect for Sen. McCain. But, if he were a Democrat, or maybe even if Sen. Paul were held in higher regard, He would’ve been admonished by the full Senate like Warren was (even though I disagreed with that action). McCain has a tendency to take positions and say things that he would criticize others for. I guess we all do…but he should have to pay the price when he does it like the rest of us.

I’m a much younger Veteran than McCain but I’ve been traveling in those circles long enough to have heard some bad stuff about the man. Enough bad stuff from reputable people that I have serious doubts about the guy.

John Stockdale was an absolute hero who never broke. It sounds like McCain was the exact opposite. I think some of his thin-skinned asshole act is an attempt to cower people into not digging too deep into his past.

John McCain. Still playing his tattered POW card after half a century, among other things. Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran, sung to the tune of the Beach Boy’s song Barbra Ann, his membership in the Keating 5, but I digress.

I know that Rand Paul is not schilling for Vladimir Putin. To Rand Paul the question is: Is an interventionist foreign policy beneficial to Americans and the subjects of interventionist’s benevolence? John McCain can not have a rational debate on this issue with Rand Paul and come out ahead, so he dismisses Rand Paul as Vlad’s whore. Since it has come to this, perhaps Rand Paul needs to point out that John McCain is prostituting himself to the military industrial complex.

I don’t understand why some people keep wanting to bring more countries into NATO to me filling nato with poorer less stable nations only weakens NATO not strengthen. I always felt bringing Turkey into NATO was a mistake I think its only done to piss off Russia which doesn’t help either.

It gives NATO a better chance of putting us into a direct war with Russia, which if you’ve been paying attention is something that both parties and the ‘Deep State’ want to happen. Make no mistake, we will be at war (like it or not) with Russia within 20 years if our trajectory does not change.

That is a meaningless accusation unless McCain is claiming that the Venn diagram overlap between “policies that help the United States” and “policies that would be approved of by Vladimir Putin” is zero. Which would, of course, be a retarded position. If the legislative rule of thumb is to do the opposite of what Russia wants at all times, then all we have to do is start deeding over U.S. land to Turkey ASAP.

John McCain, like many conservative warhawks, has a secret agenda: they want to take over the world! What else could explain our insane military budget, our troops stationed in more than half the countries of the world, our neverending interventions? Apparently it’s U.S. against the world!

Fact John McCain is more of a warmonger than Putin could ever be! and a total liar & disgrace to anything “conservative”. Remember what McCain said back in 08: “My fullow Amuricans, we must remain in the middle east if it takes 150 years!”. Well go ahead you “war hero”, go McCain & fight all the wars you want, let us know how it turns out for you, Lindsay & other warmongers, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE SICK OF YOU WORTHLESS NEOCONS! NO one in John’s home state AZ can stand the ghoul! He is the Earth’s #1 enemy when it comes to peace! Rand Paul was right a few weeks back by saying the truth: “It’s a good thing that we dont have John McCain as our president, this guy will keep us in never ending wars”. Rand you are the only decent “republican” left, its a shame that Rand wont empower the Libertarian Party, but remember, he gave the ‘nod’ to Romney a few elections ago. McCain, the only dufus on Earth who spews & thinks that “we won Vietnam”. McCain, Nancy Pelosi, McConnel, Graham, its time for your nursing home! UnAmerican, UnPatriot bloodthirsty war-vermin!

Rand Paul, we salute you for fillerbustering against Obuma & demanding him to verbally say he would never use drone strikes against U.S. Citizens, but Rand, seems like Trump isn’t listening to Americans, & has gone into Super-Hawk mode, putting a wall & the military budget 1st, INSTEAD of our crumbling infrastructure! Rand, you must talk some sense into Trumps head now! Sick of all you neocon & demonrat warmongers! NONE of you care about our vets, our children, or the very roads we have to drive them on! Not one person in Flynt, MI has decent water, but you dam necons McCain, Graham, & yeah Obuma/marxist too, sending more of our tax payer dollars to our enemies, boming & rebuilding over and over. Ron Paul was right, it only took 48-72hrs to get our military there (in the middle east), it only takes the same time TO BRING ALL TROOPS HOME, TAKE NOTE TRUMP! Has anyone learned from Vietnam? Perhaps only the Libertarians and the Constitutionalists! McCain, Sessions, Graham, Dumpkins of the decade. Trump get rid of Sessions and his 80yr-out-of-touch with Americans-stupidness! McCain, your brain was lost to dementia long ago, do the American-freedom loving civilians a favor & go to your nursing home with Nancy Pelosi, and while your at, take McConnel and Schumer with you! Have we not learned from Vietnam! Trump take note!

John McCain the fascist, demented, warmonger, foaming at the mouth for never ending wars, go bury your head in the AZ dirt you kermit the frog lookin goon. None one like you at all McCain, didnt you learn this from your “fellow Amuricans” during your pompous town hall talks in AZ? You and Lindsay-the Pansy, go and do all the fighting, while smart Americans support ending all wars in the middle east. McCain is just trying to cover up for his twin Tony Podesta, and his Russian funding. REMEMBER FOLKS, the neocon Resnublicans and the lying Demoncrats are ONE PARTY, the WARMONGERING PARTY WHICH BETRAYS THE CONSTITUTION, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND OUR CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE! “Make America Great again”, “Put America 1st”,, YEAH RIGHT TRUMP! Make America great again and fire ALL necons starting with Paul Ryan and Sessions. A Wall and beefin up the military budget, same ol same ol. How do you like your theatrics America? Have you caught on yet? GET A CLUE! TRUMP, you need to have a sit down with Judge Andrew Napolitano and Rand and Ron Paul, and re-think all of your promises! Become a REAL American Patriot by taking and upholding the Libertarian, Constiutional Oath! Enough of the continuing lies and theatrics while our people and infrastructure crumble!

John McCain and Kim Jung should play checkers, they’d be best of buddies, the love war and death so much!, Maybe they could even get a few games of basketball in with Dennis Rodman, oh thats right, McCain’s hand is forever crookedly locked, much like his mind, and he wouldnt be able to do a lay-up, though he should be laying up in a nursing home with his buddies Graham, McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer and more! Sick and disgusted by both parties neocons and demonrat warmongers/nation building/order out of chaos scum, all trying to keep Bush Sr’s “New World Order” going.. Anyone catch on, back on Sept 11, 1990, when Bush Sr had the Army College in PA publish his “Guidelines for Implementing the New World Order”?? Interesting choice of a date for such a published agenda to be released. It would do America wonders to really drain the swamp.. of ALL NECONS AND WARMONGERS!

Mccain is one of the reasons why Trump won. The republican voters just got tired of white bread moderates who refused to fight back or take risks in fear of alienating certain voters. Trump fought back, and he fought dirty.

I don’t know what happened to Mccain. Arizona still loves for some reason.